sounds like my ride's ready. don't get stuck on hold. reach an expert fast. comcast business. built for business. ♪ charlie: we begin this evening with our continued coverage of the encryption debate. should privacy be for second for security? apple's refusal to unlock a phone from one of the san bernardino shooters has revived this question. many from the tech industry and law enforcement has weighed in with their concerns. running me now from washington -- joining me now from washington is apple's attorney, ted olson.

i am pleased to have him on this program. thank you for doing this. ted: it is my pleasure. charlie: where do we stand this evening on the legal issues? ted: a magistrate judge in san bernardino county has asked the parties to prepare and submit briefs, and to prepare arguments as to whether or not the order the fbi is seeking here to cause apple to change the structure of the operating system is something that they will be required to do. charlie: you will make your argument? they will make theirs. this magistrate will make a ruling? ted: yes. it will be the justice department representing the fbi, but they work together. papers will be submitted to the magistrate and as i understand

it, as of now, there is a hearing set on march 22. charlie: next month? ted: yes. charlie: he will make a ruling? ted: it is a she. she will presumably make a ruling. that ruling would be appealable to a federal judge. appeals code follows from that. depending on who prevails. i -- charlie: ipad mini of -- i have had many conversations about this. they say they want a one time only fix by apple, which they are capable of doing, and that is it. they want apple to do it, apple to destroy what they do, end of

story. ted: have you asked the justice department to tell you on camera that they were only going to ask this one time? we know that they are seeking it in other places. the same relief and other places, in other cases. cyrus vance told you last week that he had 175 cell phones, that he wanted the same remedy. he wanted the structure of the cell phone to be changed to make it a defective device, not the device that apple designed, so they can hack into the system. this is potentially happening everywhere. while the justice department is saying, we only want to break the rules this one time, it is simply not true. it would set a precedent that

could happen anywhere, anytime. charlie: but me tell you what they have said to me. they have said that they want this one time only, and they are perfectly prepared for the process to go forward. make an exception in this one case because of the high security reasons, and let the process go forward to the supreme court if necessary. then let the ruling stand. allow them this one time to make this case for this one cell phone, then after the ruling, decide all the other cases that may come up from cy vance and others around the country. ted: we know that they are trying the same device and mechanism in other places in the country. they are asking the same thing. if it is true that they are willing to reseed from that and say they are not willing to pursue this further until there is a definitive ruling from the united states supreme court, that would be one thing.

but they are also saying the justice department, the fbi, i respect these people in our --. i know what they are trying to do and i respect them for trying to do it but we have to stand up for constitutional principles. if they are willing to say that they are willing to stop at this one situation and wait for a definitive ruling, that would be another thing. i would like to see them say that in writing to the judge in san bernardino. charlie: you have never heard that from anybody on the side of the fbi, law enforcement, or justice department? that they would be willing to consider that? ted: i have never heard that from them. i have heard them say "just this once." we know that if they are successful here in this court, this same thing could be done anywhere. the legal principle, if they can

use something called the all writs act, without a statute that often arises a court order for apple to redesign its -- that authorizes the court order for apple to redesign its software, that is a big step. they seem to want to do this everywhere. we are hearing but they are looking for this case to set a precedent, but also the same result in other places. they should put it in writing, file it with the federal court, have the justice department sign it, and say that they are waiting for a definitive ruling from the united states supreme court. that would be another thing. we can argue about the legal merits in court. charlie: you are not denying they could do this one phone and it would not affect anyone else's phone anywhere in the world? ted: i am denying that. charlie: and will not allow that to be put on any other phone

anywhere else and apple can keep their secrets and do everything they want to do. it will have no effect. ted: you are accepting the words for it. what about the district attorney in milwaukee? is he bound by what the justice department says? charlie: he would be bound by whatever the supreme court considers, or the last court of final decision is, what their decision is. ted: sure. if you are talking about and understanding that everybody waits until the united states a -- supreme court issues a definitive ruling, that is not what they have been saying, i would be interested to hear that, but apple certainly will await the decision from the united states supreme court provided that the iphone is not broken and damaged and accessed in the meantime. charlie: are there no circumstances in which apple would allow, no matter what protections given to them, no circumstances in which apple

will allow itself to enter this phone on national security grounds? not one signal exception? -- one single exception. ted: i cannot imagine all of the exceptions you might have in your mind, but rather this. but remember this. they are asking apple, a private company, to redesign their system. if they told you to redesign your program or the cameras that you use so we can listen in to somebody, put your talent and energy to work to re-create a system so that the government will have access to what you do, you would be stunned by the. this is unprecedented. the government does not have the right to conscript private citizens to invent an operating system for a cell phone anymore than they could make you do a program on pbs, or ask an artist to sing a song or write a poem. this is a constitutional government, they do not have the right to do that kind of thing.

except under perhaps exceptional circumstances. they were going to ask congress for a change in the law, they had legislation that was approved by the justice department. they pulled it. for some reason, they did not want congress to consider this issue and it should. congress should be weighing in. charlie: why do you think they pulled? ted: i don't know. i think they may have been worried about the conditions that congress might put on that authority. that is what we do in this country. we have our elected representatives decide the pro's and con's. you started by saying this is privacy versus security. this is security versus security. the security of all those people who entrusted these cell phones with their private information. charlie: if you insist that what they're asking apple to do is to change every single iphone going

forward. ted: what we know that they want to do is to develop a different program with respect to this particular iphone, but that program if it were applied to this iphone could be used in any other circumstances. someone could hack it, someone could steal it, there is no stopping another law enforcement official from seeking the same thing. no other official -- the district attorney in phoenix does not have to wait for the supreme court to go into a court in phoenix to get the same relief. charlie: so you say there is no way to separate this one phone from the others? of course. ted: if you develop a code, a computer system that will break into this phone, whatever you

have done there you can do for any other phone. charlie: you disagree with emily pierce who told bloomberg business, "the judge's order and our requests were narrowly tailored to this particular phone." ted: they wrote it that way, but the principle they are trying to accomplish is to change the structure of the phone. use your engineers to write code in such a way that you will damage and destroy the existing feature of the phone that keeps people hacking into it. they are saying, break your principles for this one case and we will never ask again. we don't believe it. they have said in that same article in "the new york times" that we are also interested in this because it is applicable elsewhere. they mention a case and that in baton rouge, louisiana.

that is one case. they want to use apple engineers to create a different product than apple created. they want to use that different product to disable and make less effective the product that apple has got on the market. charlie: you think the government is trying to mislead the american public? ted: everybody knows that the government files an application and then a second application. they are engaged in a public relations war. they want the american people to accept what they are asking. again i say, i respect director komi and the people in the -- director comey, and the people in the justice department. what they want is good, but they have to comply with the constitution when they do it.

if they would go back to congress and seek the authority they were attempting to seek, or as director comey said, we want the american people to debate this. we are the elected representatives. charlie: let me ask you hard questions and you will tell me how to handle it? ted: the once you have been asking are easy? charlie: [laughter] what if there is information in that phone linking to other people planning acts of terrorism against the united states? what is your answer to other people who are concerned about that? if your answer is about civil liberties, lay it out how it is applied here and not in other cases. ted: in the first place, what terrorists want to do is destroy the american system. they want to hurt our people and our principles.

they do not like the principles that respect equality for women, and all people, equality of religion. charlie: what principle is at stake here? ted: everything is at stake. the constitution that protects privacy, intimacy, and individual rights. if it can be violated here, it can be violated anywhere. if we surrender constitutional principles, they have achieved victory. everyone of us has to stand up for those principles. charlie: let's talk about it. suppose you were at the fbi, and you found out that there were bank records on the part of these terrorists, now dead. there were bank records you wanted access to, in the custody of a private bank, because you wanted to know how they spent their money and who they were in a financial transaction with.

would you object to giving the government access to those financial records? ted: there is a fourth amendment of the constitution that says searches must be reasonable, and pursuant to a warrant. charlie: suppose the judge says it is a reasonable search? ted: if it is, people have to comply with that. but we have yet to decide that here. this is not a search for bank records. this is an effort by the government to change the iphone. charlie: they want to do it for the same reason that they want to search bank records. ted: that's right. if they wanted to kill somebody to get through those records, we would say that it's unconstitutional. it cannot be done. simply because they want something does not mean they can do anything to get it. if they are intending apple to

put resources together to redesign the phone, they have got to get a court order to do that. they never even tried to get legislative authority to back up that court order. this is an important principle. charlie: i know and respect tim cook very much, and clearly, he is a man who believes strongly in human rights and civil liberties. he has gone at length to somehow say, for this company, we are very much opposed to any kind of illegal activity, especially that which threatens the national security of united states. some will respond to him by saying, you are asking a private company not to allow information that the government needs to prosecute criminals. end of story. ted: it is not the end of the story.

what they are asking apple to do is to design a different cell phone. design a different iphone. to take the iphone that they spent a long time crafting because people needed and wanted it, to change its designs so that it is a less effective product, a product that can protect security less than it was designed. they are asking the people at apple -- drop what you are doing. go to another business, design a different iphone for us. -- if they can get this information from this iphone, they can get it in the next case. it is not just limited to terrorism, it could be bank robbers, counterfeiters, money launderers, or whatever. charlie: do you think the fbi carefully chose this case to make the point they want in the ongoing question?

ted: that is what we are hearing that they are saying. they said this was a good case to make a test case to get that back door. maybe we will be able to get it in court because we can say the word terrorism. we will scream the word terrorism and they will intimidate apple. they are not going to intimidate apple and if they did pick this as a test case, i respect what they are trying to accomplish. they want to get information, they want to fight terrorism or the threat of terrorism. they had not demonstrated there is anything in this phone that they know about, or have a strong suspicion for. they want to overturn every stone, and i respect them for wanting to do that, but they have got to respect that apple is standing up for constitutional principles. charlie: or its business model. ted: that is so unfair. that is what they say, but

that's why i have made such a point of saying, we respect the law enforcement people and their motives. they are not according equivalent respect to apple, and the trust of its tens of millions of people that have trusted apple and the integrity of its product. don't talk about business model. this is a relationship between people who trusted apple to provide them with a product and did not suspect that apple would simply disable that product and make it into something else without testing the legal principles in court. charlie: tim cook has said to me on 60 minutes, as you know, we have encrypted this because we don't want to have any access to this phone. we want people in china to know that we don't have access we do not even know the encryption code. that's what they have said and they have said, that separates us. we sell a product. we are not like another company

in silicon valley who are selling information about people to clients who want to use it for advertising purposes. that has been one of the points that tim cook is made, time after time. ted: of course. that is what he has said. you imagine yourself as a person in china. you are a dissident. you want to communicate with other dissidents. you know that if the government gets a hold of that information, you are dead or in prison. that is those individuals in china, or india, or some other place. maybe a place in the middle east were someone is a day individual gay individual knowing he can be punished or flog for being who he is -- or flogged for being who he is, he says i need the ability to communicate knowing that it will remain private.

apple designed that product for him. apple has a responsibility to those individuals, many of whom could be in serious peril of their lives and liberty. charlie: at the same time that you say that, people stepped forward and say to have a commitment to people being periled in their lives because information that should be available to law enforcement is not. ted: i was in the justice department on september 11. i participated in the development of the legal authority that the government was seeking from congress and the courts to fight terrorism. we were sensitive to the fact that we want to fight terrorism, but we want to preserve american fundamental constitutional liberties. there is a balance there. this government must respect it just as much as apple does.

charlie: this had to do with torture? ted: i am talking about the u.s. patriot act and systems of attempting to find out information from telephone calls. the patriot act is something that everybody knows about. congress debated it and decided what the balance would be. they said that under certain situations applications for information from phones would have to go to the foreign intelligence surveillance court, under a proper warrant, need to be signed by the attorney general and director of the cia. built in protections for civil liberties. the point is that there must be a balance there and we have to respect it unless we want to give up what we stand for for the last 230 years. a constitutional democracy that protects individual liberties and the right to privacy.

charlie: taking you away from being apple's lawyer and looking at the experience you have had and life experiences, what is the way out of this? one way out is for congress to deal with it. beyond that, which has not happened, what is the solution? ted: why do you say beyond that? director comey has said this should be a matter of public debate, public representatives, and public citizens. -- they should debate the balance here. charlie: he was not talking about the debate over legislation. he was talking about a general debate. ted: what is the best context for that to take place? elected representatives have hearings.

there will already be one next week. the apple representative will be there. mr. vance will be there also. the debate is starting and apple has suggested a commission of people who know something about this. i was a member of the privacy and civil liberties oversight board where those debates take place. we fight terrorism and the enemies of this country, but we also consider the impact on our citizens of invasions of their privacy and civil liberties. that balance is important. the best place for that balance to be debated is in congress. let congress passed legislation and then we can debate it in court. charlie: the reason i said "beyond that" is because i wanted to know what you thought. what you as a citizen might recommend as the right balance. that includes all the elements we have been talking about. ted: i am not prepared now to talk about the intricacies of

legislation. it is a complicated subject. as we found out to the examination of the nsa program and other things that would -- were happening in this country. it is a serious and complicated thing. one thing i am insisting upon is that there must be legal authority, the all writs act says it is available. if the judiciary is willing to assist the government in the performance of its duties according to law. let's have the law that the government can use to seek the type of relief that it might want. charlie: on that, i have to stop. apple's case is in good hands with you. ted: i appreciate the fact that you are participating in a dialogue that the public needs to hear. charlie: thank you so much. we will be right back. ♪

♪ charlie: michael hayden is here. retired u.s. general who is the only one to have led both the cia and the nsa. he writes about these issues and more in his new book called

"playing to the edge." i am pleased to have michael hayden back at this table. let's go to the title, "playing to the edge." that is something that athletes understand. michael: the title was suggested to me by my wife. she knew what i was doing in broad terms. she understood the metaphor perfectly. in times of stress, you have to use the entire field. use all the authority of the political processes of the republic give you. i mentioned this several times in the book, i talked to her personally without giving details saying, i have to go do something and sooner or later is going to blowback. on me, on you, and the kids. charlie: you just watched the conversation between ted olson, the attorney for apple.

what is your position? michael: my position is that the general principle of requirement , demand, request that apple universally enable backdoors and all their devices -- on that one, i side with apple. ted brought up privacy and constitutional issues. something that might -- might -- my experience should prepare me to talk about. on the grounds of security and safety, i think that is the best choice. i think that american security and safety in this current cyber era is better served with end to end unbreakable encryption. charlie: under any circumstances? michael: in terms of, you do not want to compel the company to

put a backdoor in. charlie: the best way to overcome the argument is asking what they are being asked to do. michael: this is the distinction. i agree totally with apple on the general premise. no universal enabling. if somebody puts a backdoor and something, i am saying, thank you, lord, here we go. i am not convinced that what james comey and the bureau are asking for is that. i think there are differences. i am willing at the present time with what i know to shade in the direction of the bureau's request. if that's not true, i would expect apple to make the case, the burden of proof being on them that if i concede this, i am creating that. i am not convinced this takes you there.

charlie: that is the question i asked. several times. but you say if they cannot show you that, they ought to have access to this phone. michael: otherwise, i think tim is in the position of saying that apple under no circumstances will allow itself to cooperate with law enforcement, no matter what. i don't think that's a good position to be in. charlie: he said, i am uncomfortable being in a position like that. michael: on the broader principle, backdoor enabling universal -- on the grounds of security -- charlie: you don't want to see a backdoor. let me talk about your life and career. edward snowden is making some noise that he would like to come back if given the promise of a fair trial. michael: he has a definition. charlie: what is it? michael: he wants to use the public interest defense. saying, it doesn't matter that i broke the law, i did a good

thing and i should only be judged on the appreciation of what i did. i guess that would be attractive to some people. when you look at the american history of civil disobedience and you read thoreau on civil disobedience, his magic is it only becomes a morally justifiable act if you are willing to pay the consequences. charlie: clearly that is true and martin luther king went to jail. michael: it gives it moral character. charlie: do you believe that edward snowden, after the release of everything, how would you characterize how he damaged the united states? michael: it is the single greatest hemorrhage of legitimate american secrets in the history of the republic.

one others asked me this question they jump in on metadata. let me concede the point. the other 98% of what he released has to do with how america collects foreign intelligence. what civil liberties quotient was there? the document he gave a thatspondent allowed correspondent to write about the ability of the national security agency to intercept and penetrate the unclassified e-mails of the syrian armed forces. what civil liberties quotient are we suggesting when he makes public that nsa and gchq intercepted the satellite phone of someone at the g 20 meeting. charlie: has there been, as far as you know, any deaths because of what he did? michael: i don't know.

i am not in government. it might be difficult to prove even with the full evidentiary trail that a caused b. when i talk to people still in government, i say, i am saying public things. tell me that you will not saw the limb off behind me. have these revelations harmed american security? what i get is something like, oh, yes. charlie: harmed it because it gave some insight? michael: there is a lot out there now that was legitimately secret. charlie: if you know they are doing this, you can change your behavior. michael: you can avoid that pathway. here's a softball. he revealed something called the

cbjb. the congressional budget justification book. it is a massive document we create every year. in it, down to a programmatic level, it shows what we are spending money on within each of the three letter agencies. why we're spending money and where we think we are strong and weak and need to spend additional resources. i would have moved heaven and earth to get that document from a host of countries around the world, and he gave it to them for free. charlie: do you believe that after he fled to russia and china, because of their intelligence agencies and interrogation, that they have essentially denied it. do you assume it did and do you assume they had means of getting

more information from him that would be damaging to america's national security? michael: you are talking to an intelligence officer. i am most comfortable reasoning in an inductive manner. i have data and i say this is what i think happened. i don't have data that any of that happened. reasoning deductively, coming back to what best explains his ability to do these things. i begin to hypothesize that he got assistance from other. and what others may have been able to get from him, if he had the data with him in hong kong and moscow -- we may never know. in my current position -- in my old job, you need to assume that. it he had the data with him, i would lose all respect for the chinese intelligence service if they did not harvest all of it.

charlie: every intelligence agency has told me that. everyone who has a history in intelligence has said that. i would have lost respect for them if they did not do that. cyber terrorism. you say -- where do you think we are in terms -- the president has made agreements with xi jinping. we've seen what has happened in terms of hacking. some of it by governments. some of it by concerns for other means of private gain and otherwise. michael: i got done with the original manuscript -- i don't have a chapter on cyber. i went back and reconstructed cyber. it didn't naturally appear in each of the parts and i pulled it all together. the first point i would make is,

we have done a lot in this area. we have organized powerful institutions to work america's will in the cyber domain. charlie: do we know more than anybody else because of our technological superiority? michael: i would make the claim that we are better than anyone else in the world and we are better at stealing other people secrets. i make the point in the book that we self limit. we steal secrets to keep our citizens free and safe. we do not steal secrets to make them rich. that makes them one of four to five countries on the planet. charlie: you say the chinese does that to give an advantage to the state owned enterprises? michael: absolutely. you mentioned xi jinping. that was an amazing statement, we will see the reality. that he agreed with the american definition of legitimate espionage. you do not use the power of the state to steal secrets for

profit. xi jinping promised the china will not do that. we'll see what happens. charlie: when you look at the possibilities of an attack against that grid, which could have a huge impact. bill gates was here talking about how crucial energy was. if you have the capacity to turn the switch on something like electricity which influences not only their water filtration, but their hospitals, and everything they do. michael: a current appreciation of that. i treat it a bit in the book. i do not focus on a near peer turning out the lights east of the mississippi river. i don't. charlie: because if they did, we would?

michael: here is how i describe it to popular audiences, if the chinese did that that is not the first thing in the president's brief tomorrow. there are other things going on. it's part of a ledger -- larger set. i think it is unlikely. i'm more concerned not about the catastrophic attack, but what i call the isolated, renegade, roll the dice, nothing to lose nationstate. a permanent definition of north korea. i could fit iran in that box is -- if something heads south. i could pull the russians in there. if vladimir putin is under great torque between autocrats and others, that what they want to do is reach out and poke and say this is not without consequences. i am more concerned about that range of threat.

not the catastrophic near peer attack. charlie: when you look at what putin has done -- there have been lots of articles in the last two weeks. of an have a kind agreement between russia and the united states with respect to trying to make some kind of cease-fire and deal, that would include assad, and a transition to syria. there is some reluctance and some people in damascus do not even want to see it because they think they're winning. because russia stepped in. michael: and hezzbolah. this has been a win-win for putin. our president has pointed out it could be a quagmire for the russians. that is probably true, but it doesn't make it less bad news for us.

the russians are back into the middle east for the first time since 1973. charlie: someone said they are at the table and maybe the head of the table. michael: they are. because of the resources -- you have our secretary of state trying to move heaven and earth to stop the killing. we are in the position of being a supplicant. he is going to the russians and iranians and saying, please, we need a cease-fire than what he cannot say, we need a cease-fire, this is what we want and if we do not get it, this is what we're going to do. there is nothing to fill that in. he is flying without top cover because everyone knows we are not committed to any more dramatic action in syria. and -- charlie: and take advantage of that? michael: absolutely. i talk about russia in the book

and i say i went to over 50 countries as the director of the cia, but not one of them was russia. they were off or scope for total long -- for too long. ♪

♪ charlie: marco rubio has said that on assuming office, if he is elected, he will disavow the iran nuclear deal.

michael: i would caution him to take his time on that. i have a lot of heartburn with the iran nuclear deal. we are a great power and the rest of the world needs us to act with some consistency. charlie: with respect to iran, is it possible to expect them to change their behavior? can we force them to change their behavior? michael: i talk a lot about iran and i am fairly critical of the agreement, the light end the -- though i and the chapter saying, we may not have bought this deal, but i don't think we had better ideas either. charlie: that's what the president said. he said, if you have a better idea, say some. some of the other countries were surprised that the iranians agreed to it.

michael: henry kissinger says that iran must make up its mind. we negotiated with iran as a country. since the agreement, iran has acted like a cause and they have acted like a cause without consequence. somebody needs to be pushing back on these guys. charlie: they did something and we should have pushed back and didn't? michael: sure. it is the iranians working with the russians that has saved the bashar al-assad regime. charlie: they were doing that before. the used their own militia and through hezbollah. michael: yes but they have more resources to do it. you can make the argument that we did not react boldly enough

probably because of the agreement, because of the negotiations. i think that is a bad idea and i hope it is not true but i fear that it was. now we have the agreement set and we still seem to be acting timidly. the iranians continued their ballistic missile program. charlie: in what way is this a criticism of the president. do you think he does not see the problems or he does not have a toughness? as soon as you say that, people will say i sat in the situation room and he has toughness. michael: i know that he has toughness but he also has priorities and his priorities are far more jefferson than jackson or wilson. he is far more interested in turning inward. he is spending his personal and political capital to do nationbuilding at home.

charlie: let me quote to you the secretary of defense who was on this program on monday who said to me that the president has asked him to do everything possible -- i said, in any way is there pushback from the president when you and the chairman of the joint chiefs recommend more military action in syria. he said no. he said the president is saying, present me more options of what we can do. he is shown a preference for a light footprint but at the same time he is saying to his military people give me options, i want to do more. michael: ash carter is a good friend and he has been visibly more aggressive in suggesting options. michael: charlie, my observation is that the american effort against isis in iraq and effort -- and syria has been under

resourced. after the horrific paris attacks after that weekend, we for the first time bombed the oil fields and the oil distribution system on which isis was relying for finances. what made that an acceptable tactical decision on sunday when it wasn't for the preceding year and a half? i have talked to people as well without betraying confidences. the tolerance of the administration for collateral damage is near zero. charlie: no tolerance for collateral damage? if that is a risk, then don't take the action. michael: i have a good friend planner for the air war against saddam hussein and he summarizes this roughly

speaking, god made air powered to be used like a violent storm. what we have against syria is a gentle irish mist. >> what was the most sobering experience for you at cia? in late 2007 or early 2008, we reached the conclusion that al qaeda was reconstituting. it was not just a force protection threat to afghanistan but a threat to the homeland. we went about an analytic process by which we attempted to convince the political leadership that action was absolutely essential. i go through that in the text and i use a line in the text that i never used in the oval, if you boil down all the

briefings for six months with regard to what was going on, it was this. knowing what we know now, there will be no excusing our inaction. by july of 2008, the president authorized the united states to conduct far more robust action against al qaeda along the border. this is july 2008. charlie: the tail end of the bush administration. michael: it is. you see a knee in the curve of targeted killings. then you see president obama sustaining that rate for about a year and then doubling down in 2010. charlie: according to you president bush personally intervened in 2005 to try to keep the new york times from publishing publishing a scoop. what happened?

michael: this was the program we set up within a few weeks of 9/11 to better detect terrorist threats entering, leaving or already present in the united states. the times had part of the story. and decided not to publish. fast-forward about one year later and they now want to publish. as i point out, they told either -- me they needed to publish because other sources have come forward. i thought they needed to publish because the writer was going to tell the story anyway in an upcoming book. we tried to dissuade them that this was not in the interest of american security. the final meeting that we had in the oval, with the president and arthur sulzberger. the editor was there in the bill cowher. we made one final plea for them not to publish.

charlie: what was the plea? michael: this is a successful program i was the briefer and i tried to explain how we used the data and collected it from the program and that this program was successful because not everyone knew about it. the difference between assuming and having something fully reported in america's newspaper of record. we were done with the meeting, i would call it inconclusive in -- and the last thing the publisher said was, we will get back to you about our decision and then a week later they published. charlie: clearly they did not publish for -- how long? about a year. there is a perception that newspapers have no regard for national security. michael: that is simply not true. charlie: they came down after a year and had a conversation to hear you up.

-- here you out. those kinds of decisions take place all the time and people do not appreciate or understand. michael: i appreciate it. i have a line i use in the book that when my public affairs officer came running in with his hair on fire and said, they are going to do this, you need to call and give me a name. they always took the call. i would begin with, in every instance, i understand that you and i share responsibility for american safety and liberty but i fear the way you are about to carry out your responsibilities will make it more difficult for me to carry out mine. in many instances, the story was amended or stopped. there were some that did not happen. i reserve the right to complain about that. charlie: president kennedy said

he wished the times had published more about the bay of pigs. it is great to see you. "playing to the edge" is the book. thank you for joining us. see you next time. ♪

reporter: it is noon here in hong kong. i've update with the top story. foronn will buy the company $6.2 billion. the foxconn bailout was up against the bid inc. j. the decision was sharp. sydney cutting most of its workforce, they world's biggest industry. the job cuts will be completed